Sumo Where’s Waldo

Mato & I have been watching the New Year Basho (Sumo Tournament) for the past few weeks. It’s our first time really paying attention to the sport, and we’ve learned so much. I’m officially a sumo fan, heck yeah, I wanna see some matches in person!

Sumo is considered a dying sport, so the audience at the Basho was mostly elderly Japanese people. Every once in a while, Mato & I would spot an anomaly in the crowd, and we ended up making at Where’s Waldo game of sorts. Next time you watch a sumo match, keep an eye on the audience as give yourself points if you see:

A foreigner

A millennial

Geisha (we really saw this)

Someone holding up a sign

A hamburger (still haven’t seen this one)

An old person with an old flip phone

An excited kid

Someone wearing a shirt with English on it

Someone knitting

The New Year Basho ended yesterday and the Spring Basho starts on March 11. If you have access to Japanese TV get yourself ready! Maybe if we see more anomalies we can turn it into a bingo game.

2 thoughts on “Sumo Where’s Waldo”

There are lots of Thousand Generation so-and-so, “harp” is in a lot of names, and that mythical Chinese bird that we thought was “pigeon” is in there a lot too. And yes, plenty of mountains. Next time I’ll write the cool names down!

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A lot is always going on behind the scenes of our Legends of Localization projects. Here, we’ll share some inside looks at what we’re up to and share cool photos + info of our research materials, most of which never gets seen in our main articles & books!